Scott Snyder is a horror writer so yeah I can understand why he failed to land the whole comedic sociopathy aspect of Joker. Court of the Owls was his greatest contribution on my opinion.
Joker can be multiple things. He is a versatile character. Horror, grim cold and calculating or a comedian who commits crime and kills. There’s been multiple ways to do it
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 Even Art the clown, terrifier's primary antagonist is funny and has several moments of comedy that help enhance him as a character
@@Birds_In_Crime haven't watched those movies, only saw trailers since they seem to be the type of movie that makes you really uncomfortable real quick (not a fan of long scenes of gore and torture in excess)
@@michealmahmoud6391the thing that makes us sad is about popular media forjing peoples opinion, and Jonkler 2019 was a big success, kinda makes the people wanting for more tragic stories
Joker needs to be wrong again. They keep trying to ascend him and his cause to new levels but he's better when his statements, his causes are simply refuted. BTAS Joker has him stalking a fat little nobody that punishes him, not through violence but tricking him with a dummy bomb to bare his entire life's thesis to the world and how pathetic it is. He even gets a laugh out of Batman, something the Joker wants but can't get. Killing Joke, as pointed out, his one bad day for Gordon fails. The actual Arkham games end with Joker pathetically begging to never be forgotten as he indeed is getting locked away to be forgotten. Dark Knight, Heath Ledger talks about how, like him, everyone will just sacrifice each other, just to be told no by nobody giving into his games at the end. Joker is best when his beliefs lose.
1st off you can't determine what's 'wrong' & vice versa in its absolute form of truth. finally, what is the essence of the thematic process of Joker needing his beliefs or whatever you spewed to being false or as you put it wrong' - or have his beliefs 'lose'.
also, it's your 1st paragraph in conclusion a non-sequitur with the batman laughing but then you pointing out how it's something that Joker wants but can't get... huhuhuh???
@godzillafriction joker got Batman to laugh by being pathetically wrong, not by being funny like he wanted to. Are you dense or do you just pretend to be? Fancy words don’t mean jack if you can’t use em mate
Finally someone who understands that Joker is the type of villain that kicks a baby, makes an awful joke and just laughs his ass off, not a walking mental health PSA
You mentioned Arkham's Joker. One of my favourite bits of his was in Asylum. You hear these thugs talking, one says 'he asked me to kill my sister, I done it', then another guy says "yeah he asked me too, I kept trying to tell him I didn't have a sister but he kept asking, so I just ran down some random woman". That, to me feels like a great capture of the balance Joker should be. Oh and shout outs to Telltale Joker, underrated adaptation.
Shoutouts to John Doe for being a pretty normal guy, all things considered. He's just a lil quirky. I think Arkham Joker strikes the right balance of being a psychotic mastermind, and just legitimately funny with fun bits. Even when as he's minutes before dying he still cracks jokes. "Every decision you ever make ends with death and misery. People die, I stop you, you'll just break out and do it again" "Think of it as a running gag" He stabs Batman right as he says it, and it ironically makes him drop the cure by accident. It's almost poetic how his own antics led to his end.
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 I think it’s also interesting showing how Bruce’s choices affected the creation of the Joker in a more active way with John Doe. Taking the tragedy up , by making him someone who’s being haunted by the darker potential and Bruce’s actions are what leads him to become a vigilante or the clown Prince
@@BonnieFluff I think what makes it work is how he combines elements of TAS, the movies (Nicholson and Ledger) and the comics to make a new and innovative Joker. From design (appearance, the Joker has been given a make-up based Glasgow smile to make it look like he's always smiling. The medical roll as spats, etc) to personality. This felt like a perfect Joker from the comics that fits the gothic horror landscape of the Arkham games
Nah Cletus is a at least entertaining and 70s-90s Joker was distinct enough from him. The Modern Edgy juggalo though ? There is a reason editors are needed...
@@zillafire101 I remember seeing a fan fiction where joker started doing wacky schemes. And when asked why he said "I was starting to become another zsaz. And we don't need more than one of that guy."
I REALLY believe people misunderstood the killing joke. The idea of one bad day is fucking bullshit. And because of this misunderstanding, they decided to have joker be this horror movie styled extremist. It's almost ridiculous.
exactly. we all make choices, and to do evil is a choice, no matter the circumstances. The Killing Joke was trying warn against the one bad day idea, not supporting it. There are evil people by nature and not nurture.
Fuck if I know what the kid's supposed to be referring to. I'm not seeing any circular reasoning here and they forewent explanation in favour of smugness.
You mean like comics in general? We're talking about an industry that existed as a front for the Italian mob for like 40 years, they weren't big on quality control.
There's a large portion of fans who say things like "there is no batman without joker" when it comes to defending his overuse and many fail to see that they are pretty much downgrading his talk of having such a great rogues gallery. I mean Spider-Man, Superman and Flash can have great stories without their big bad but Batman can't? EDIT: it was a rhetorical question. Don't need to tell me. I know Batman can have great stories with little to no involvement of the Joker.
@@jessicalang1024 Batman can exist without Joker and we have seen it done before, just because he is iconic doesn't mean he is necessary to all narratives about the dark knight. While the Batman is an incredible movie with almost nothing in terms of the clown prince of crime, and the Penguin is by far one of the best crime series I ever watched especially if we are talking in terms of comic book characters, Joker 2 shows why the Joker does not work without Batman since he is made to oppose the dark knight but not much else on his own
You say that and yet every live action version of Superman has to have Lex Luthor involved somehow. Spider-Man has the same problem where oops it was Green Goblin all along is a running joke within the fanbase and Flash relies so heavily on Reverse Flash now that when The Flash TV show was airing almost every season's main villain was just made to be a copy of Reverse Flash if not just being the Reverse Flash himself.
@@InReserveProductionsThat’s false at least with other Spider-man media nearly none really uses the Green Goblin. Venom is more the go to villain throughout every story.
I feel like the best way to use the Joker know is to just go all in on him being a wildcard. Like he will never be rehabilitated and he doesnt actually care or have an ideaology, but he is still content with himself. Like you could have Punchline be all about "society bad", but Joker is like "i really dont care about proving a point, or batman, or anything. I just want to do crazy shit and have a good time."
I think his crimes should also be a wildcard. Imagine an early batman dealing with a joker who simply did something stupid, like rob a bank using gag toys and weapons, then next time you see him he has horrifically murdered a ton of city hall members and started city wide riots. Make him an actual joker like the play card, that's why he is so dangerous to batman because he is either going to burn a hospital to the ground with everyone in it, or send the mayor or gotham a prank gift that pies him in the face and batman never knows which joker he is going tobhave to deal with
There's a bit from the Arkham games that I think demonstrates this well. One of the many bombs Joker placed throughout Gotham is disarmed and found to be filled with marzipan and kittens. Are they all duds? Just this one? Half and half? Just one real bomb? The only way to know would be to know what Joker thought would be funnier at the time. I think that's where he works. Just a guy getting his jollies in whatever way sounds fun that day.
Joker doesn't feel like the Joker anymore, he's THE villain that monopolizes the joke themed villain type in comics, to the point that any other joke themed rogue (with the exception of Mr.Mxyzptlk) is always regarded as some sort of cheap copy of him, even in cases where it's absolutely untrue (like with Trickster) and YET it seems like writers don't want to deal with the gimmick beside making fun of it or using it in the most superficial way possible. Another problem i see is that every writer wants to amp up the others, everyone wants to write that big and bombastic Joker story that could become a must read but they fail in keeping the character consistent and deliver an actual good story so we get these big and bloated storylines that we'll forget in a week, it's so ironic that Paul Dini with "Slayride" was able to accomplish exactly what guys like Scott Snyder wanted and he did that with just a station wagon. Sometimes less is more. My idea for fixing the Joker is very simple: look back to Dixon's Joker stories. The point of Dixon's Joker stories is very simple and it's a point that could be applied to most of Joker's masterpieces like Englehart's "Laughing Fish" or Moore's "Killing Joke": Joker's crimes are ludicrous and yet he executes them with the utmost seriousness. The idea that all it takes is one bad day to make you a monster like Joker is stupid if you think about it but Joker treats it like it is this big revelation and he carries it out seriously cause THAT'S THE JOKE. You can apply this to Joker's appearance in Knightquest, "Devil's Advocate" or "Dreadful Birthday", "Dear Joker...!"
Tbh you don’t know who the joker is he can be whatever the storyteller wants 😂😂 yall don’t say anything when Batman dark and not that cornball character he used to be😂
@@Wyatt6661 then he has no characterization at all. If i can write a character in whatever manner i desire then how can you or anybody say that you like or dislike said character? That's exactly the problem that a lot of people had with Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum's explanation of Joker's change throughout the decades: that Morrison, in order to justify the character evolution, ended up killing the very concept of characterization. Reality is that Joker, exactly like Batman, went through a lot of changes throughout time from the more "mystery men" inspired period of the early Golden Age to the "cornballs" of the Silver Age, from the serious and deep version of the O'Neil era to the overly saturated and excessive of today. Reality is that, despite not everything being top notch, Batman and Joker were at the peak of their characterization from the 70's till the end of the O'Neil's era (more or less the start of the 2000s). Writers decided to take more inspiration in their depiction of Batman and Joker from the excesses of Frank Miller or Mike Barr than authors like Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant or the previously mentioned Dennis O'Neil
I would like to add that we did get an incredible telling of joker this year in tom kings "winning card" in which we see joker tell various jokes along with being completely randomly murdering people in brutal ways. He doesn't have any motive or some sort of "society" thing going on. He literally is just a sick killing machine that batman devotes himself to stopping. I think this comic went super under the radar because nobody is talking about it. I will 10000% agree though. We just really need a joker break. Batmans rogues gallery is huge. We have a lot more options that just him. HBOS penguin just proved that. We don't need everything to be joker related. Just need a good story with good characters.
@@ChipzBitz personally i don't like Tom King's writing. It's extremely pretentious and 99/100 of the times he doesn't get the characters he has to write. He showed many times he doesn't understand Riddler at all (War of Jokes and Riddles, One Bad Day, Killing Time) and his stuff with Penguin is atrocious. Having said that i haven't read "Winning Card" and i'll give it a try cause you recommended it but i must say i haven't great expectations about it. The fact of Batman's rogue's gallery is that there are so many rogues that have a lot of untapped potential but (for the most part) nowadays we get a Joker storyline or a new villain that nobody's gonna use after the guy that created said villain will leave the Batman title. People complain that guys like Penguin, Scarecrow or Two-Face have been around since the 40's therefore we need some new rogues cause "all the stories of the main villains have been told at this point" and yet EVERY writer that arrives on a Batman title has a new Joker story ready to be published. Guys like Scarecrow or Mr.Freeze that are considered big shots in Batman's rogue's gallery have a very limited amount of good stories so the situation for foes like Firefly, Maxie Zeus or Mad Hatter is even worst
I really miss when Joker was ACTUALLY allowed to be funny like when he roasted Bennett for turning him into Clayface, knowing full well he is the main reason Ethan's life was ruined
Ive said it before and ill say it again. I miss when joker just liked offing people, made bad jokes, robbed banks, and legitimately wanted to KILL BATMAN as opposed to the "oh i love him i dont want to kill him and want to prove a point about soeciety" version. Basically joker pre morrison era
Yep. I can respect interpretations where he feels he's lost something from Batman disappearing but not in some sick, stalker sense. Just the emptiness one can get from not having a real challenge to overcome anymore or having a favorite opponent that is no longer there. Just losing the one person that pushed you to be better. But that should never take priority of the Joker wanting to and getting satisfaction from killing Batman. The only reason he should get upset at anyone else doing the job is because he wanted the achievement of doing so and doing it in his own theatrical and climactic fashion.
@@killerblodychuky6 Ah, like in DCAU. If he has to kill him, it's got to be done with gusto, like turning his ward into his pawn and getting him to attempt to kill him as a nice bit of dramatic irony. The script writes itself.
so 1st, stop utilizing 'eDytH' it's a useless informal labelling of any type of definition that it's used within context. 2nd, there's no such thing as a 'Psychopath' etc. etc. 3rd, stop utilizing 'kid' in a paradoxical manner within the context of how someone would write The Joker. your standpoint is entirely reductive, superficial & is plagued with a higher set of perceived standards that gets determined in its absolute form of truth.
I agree, something about a version of The Joker who gets teleported to fucking Apokolips and starts fanboying over the chaos, only to hide behind Batman as soon as Darkseid turns his attention against him is just hilarious in the best way possible, plus I think he and Harley’s relationship is the best in those games, the abusive relationship stuff is neat but basically everything that could be done with that concept has been, it’s still somewhat implied they might be romantic in the games but as the games went on it became less so and I honestly kinda prefer them as platonic partners in crime.
@@IMASAURUS1996 I think Scarecrow or Two-face should become Batman's nemesis, at least when Joker is out of the picture. I honestly forget how deep the rogues gallery is because DC loves to shove Joker and Harley in every single adaptation while the likes of Hugo Strange or even Bane get overlooked, in favor of another killing joke reference
@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 Two face would've make great sense with the connection he has with Batman and it's easy for audience to sympathize why he won't kill or abuse criminals.
Tbh they could be expanded on but there are so many others who need some exposure either 1st time on the silver screen or given a second look: Clayface, Court of Owls, Hush, Deathstroke, Croc...
@@illizcit1 strongly disagree with Deathstroke. We’ve seen him done too many times and it’s always either hit or miss, with more misses than hits tbh. Deathstroke needs a break. Or at the very least, stop having him fight everyone but the Teen Titans. Deathstroke was a Titans villain, but they’ve got him fighting everyone BUT them. (Don’t mention the live action show. What a disgrace that was).
My solution would honestly be to just retire the character for like a year. Everyone is sick to death of him and it often feels like other villains are treated as accessories to the endless war between Batman and Joker. Even in Arkham Knight when the main villain is ostensibly Scarecrow, he gets basically completely drowned out by yet more Joker, even when the character is literally so dead you start the game by cremating him.
@@regularshowman3208 One year is very little if we are talking comics, he should be retired for five years to really feel genuine and to allow for story lines focused on other rogues. I think after Joker 2 we will see a decrease in the character use even if little, maybe the Penguin's success will sky rocket more projects exploring other rogues that haven't had a spotlight in the public eye, I am personally hoping for Two Face and Scarecrow to get really good adaptations since they feel like contenders for the title of "Batman's nemesis" But would also be cool to see minor rogues such as the Prometheus, Killer Moth or Maxie Zeuss make the jump into an live action adaptation
Comics biggest problem in general is how stagnant the scene is because we haven't given these heros and villians who are getting close to 100 years old rest.
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 i hope that means decress on harley quinn to becuase she is so overplayed im tired of her..while we can have ras al ghul and thalia al ghul they are so overlooked and the scarecrow in arkham knight was so cool amd creepy i want to see more of him that joker
I feel that the easiest way to write Joker is to relate his violence and criminality to how comedy works; sometimes the humor is absurdist, sometimes it is only funny to the comedian, sometimes the jokes don't land, and sometimes they go too far. Joker is always experimenting with his "routine", always keeping everyone on their toes but he knows that "you can never beat the classics". Also, the whole face thing should've been a Hush story. I mean CMON!
To quote the Joker from Neil Gaiman’s “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader”… “Kid…I’m the Joker. I don’t just randomly kill people. I kill people when it’s funny. What would conceivably be funny about killing you?”
17:38 Joker killing himself by challanging Batman, and him refusing to play is so genius. It is in character for Joker to do that eventually, it doesn't compromise Batmans morals either, while showing that Joker was his own worst enemy all along, the only reason he dies, is because of himself.
Batgirl being sent to the fridge fucking sent me. EDIT: I think during the Killing Joke where Batman and Joker laugh, I always saw it as showing that at the end of the day nothing has changed.
Completely agree with you at 8:48. It really feels like because of the success of Heath Ledger's Joker performance in The Dark Knight, a lot of filmmakers and comic book writers have forgotten that the Joker character isn't just a homicidal maniac, but also a clown with a lot of chutzpah and panache who frequently makes dark jokes and uses clown themed gadgets like joy buzzers, bang flag guns, exploding chattering teeth, laughing gas, and acid squirting flowers, so seeing something like that again would be very welcomed.
People misinterpret Heath Ledger’s Joker nowadays. People think that his Joker was great because he looks like an anti-establishment punk guy. The reason Heath Ledger has an anti establishment punk style in the movie is to symbolize his chaotic nature and symbolizes him being death incarnate to Gotham City. Leto’s Joker, Phoenix’s Joker, and other comic Jokers glamorize being punky and being anti-establishment for the sake of it and for shock value.
OP, i truly wonder how that's the case with the 'Modern Joker' that apparently misinterpreted the Joker following along Heath Ledger's Joker. I wonder if you'll dissect & properly elaborate using 'independent critical/analytical thinking skills & an outlook onto different perspectives' because from what im seeing based off this video & the exemplification of the comment section being a bunch of superficial, reductive & indoctrinated dimwits. i barely have any hope for you to indulge on those things I've asked you to.
Unironically some of the best stories are when he's just doing random side-quests. Like that one manga where Batman turns into a baby and he has to take care of him is pretty good
In my dc headcanon Joker does end up finally dying. I imagine the chemicals that created him are finally taking toll on his body, and he's dying. He ends up coming up with a master plan to take Gotham with him, and his plan for the most part is succeeding. But when he's about to detonate bombs all over Gotham, he ends up succumbing to his illness and dies, unable to give the punchline.
This also kinda feeds into why Batman's no kill rule gets so much flack online, just off what people say, it sounds like Joker keeps getting worse to the point where not killing him is getting hard and harder to justify. As Joker is the main thing people cite when criticizing it.
That is one of the reasons the no kill rule gets flak among others. 1. As said, Joker gets worse and worse. When he was mostly just a normal super villain then it was just one of those things where "If he is gonna kill Joker, why not kill every super villain?" which worked at the time. Now however, when Joker can literally be a global threat, killing millions and being so damn sadistic and depraved that there is no level he won't stoop to? Where he seems like he is the most insane, sickest Batman villains rolled into one bleached skinned creep? He starts separating himself from the usual villains as an absurdly monsterous piece of crap who's death literally no one would mourn or care about. When he is just poisoning some fish to look like his face or robbing a bank with gag weapons, that is fine but when in some continuities he is successfully nuking whole cities...? Why isn't anyone killing him the moment they see him? 2. Batman will not only not kill him, there are some instances will he will stop other people from killing him. I am convinced that if Gotham managed to get Joker on the Death Penalty, but through illegal methods, Batman would stop it even though Joker deserves it. I am sure there are examples of Batman fighting other villains to keep them from killing Joker and in the Red Hood comic, he almost slits Jason Todd's throat to keep him from killing Joker. It at times goes beyond just sticking with the law, it almost seems like Batman doesn't want Joker to be killed in some stories so the no kill rule seems less like 'I can't stoop to their level' and moreso 'I need these villains to give me purpose'. 3. This is my personal opinion that I am not sure others share but...Batman has contingencies to take out some of his closest friends. He has plans to put down someone like Superman or Flash who are good people. The explanation is that they could be dangerous if their powers are used maliciously that they need plans to be stopped ASAP which is fair, a rogue Superman or Flash or any of the stronger League members would be scary...but because of how absurd Joker has gotten...he is now as major a threat as them. Joker once somehow Jokerized the League, making them enough of a threat for Batman to use some of his contingencies. This means logically, Joker is on that same level if he can brainwash someone like Superman...and yet...where is his contingency? Super smart Bruce Wayne has plans to take out his godlike friends but apparently doesn't have plans to take out the dangerous clown terrorist that has Jokerized them before. It shows a weird priority with Batman will despite the fact that one of his main villains has shown to be on a similar threat level as his friends...he won't put his hyper intelligence towards putting Joker out for good. He will have so many deadly contingencies for Superman...but not the Joker..who has actually turned Superman murderous before..?
Something I’ve been noticing is the idea of him having this tragic backstory to explain his turn into a villain when in other adaptations it’s more of a mystery. Even then a lot of adaptations show him as a criminal before turning into the joker so we was never really relatable to begin with.
The irony of making joker an edgy slasher villain is it made him more generic and predictable which goes against the whole point of him being the ultimate wild card hence the name. Joker didn’t just used to want to cause chaos he basically WAS chaos to the point Batman once admitted joker’s mad schemes only makes sense to himself alone because he’d orchestrate ruthless, murderous attacks one day and the next pull wacky antics like running for governor or poisoning fish. Putting on a grand theatrical spectacle with Gotham as his stage at Batman’s expense is what he’s after. In my opinion joker should have such disregard of others that killing is almost an afterthought to him unless he’s targeting specific people like how he’d come on the tv and announce “so and so will die at midnight!”
@ I do love his style of joker/batman stories but I’ll admit laughing fish and Dark detective might be the only stories of his I’ve read so far from anniversary anthology books.
@JokerFan-hj4iv yeah tbf I think those are the only Joker stories he wrote anyway (the main ones. There are a couple of others). But I think his are quite definitive so it really doesn't matter that he actually did not wrote that many Joker stories
@@MidnightIsolde I feel like Paul dini took a lot of inspiration from that era of Batman comics when writing BTAS. Perfect mix of gothic detective and fun adventure hero stories.
Does Joker even HAVE a character anymore? He feels almost flanderized to hell and back at this point! That is; when it doesn’t feel like the writers aren’t just trying to make him into a Carnage ripoff.
Oh god, I never realized that Barbara got basically fridged. The implied SA and general humiliation of her always rubbed me the wrong way, but I never associated it with that trope for some reason. Killing Joke had some good moments, but the more time goes on, the more I agree with Alan Moore's take on it.
@@danse777macabre Yeah, I mean if it's well executed. People around the protagonist in general have tragedies happen to them regardless of gender, that's just how storytelling goes (when in doubt, ask Harvey Dent).
I think more people should read Batman: The Dark Prince Charming, because in there the Joker is back to being a clown themed criminal mastermind. There’s no deep nihilism, he only kills people because he wants to (and spares some because they amuse him), he’s not out here to make a point or break anyone’s spirit, he’s just the Joker.
Only major issue I have with The Joker, is DC has a very bad habit of thinking he's the ONLY worthwhile Batman villain to explore. Don't get me wrong, he's an amazing villain, but I like it when we see more love also given to characters like Two-Face, Ra's Al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, Riddler etc
@@jorts_master69 Yeah, both have almost the same potential of being Batman's nemesis if given the right writer, plus Joker is so saturated nowadays that he is running out of material for his own jokes and plans to go against the Batfamily without getting the death sentence (at this point is the Gotham's justice system fault for not ending their own suffering)
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197Ra’s Al Ghul is truly underrated and should be used way more often. Him being centuries old thanks to the Lazarus Pit and his knowledge of Batman’s secret identity is really cool and makes him stand out from most typical villains. I’d also like to see more of Scarecrow.
15:23 the end of the comic suggests Joker was fabricating the connection and was just using the myth to get a rise. One could say he was joking. It does not really line up with the later Three Jokers lore, though, so still could have been better handled.
Didn't they also retcon the three Jokers a few issues later by saying that they were just different aspects of the one and same guy after all? (which tbh makes this whole exercise seem kinda pointless imo)
Also, wanna get into why Penguin seems to have declined in recent years? Why he's just a gangster now, and that live action portrayals seem allergic to having an umbrella, weaponized or no?
I feel like what a lot of modern Joker stories forget that while he can be a threatening and downright scary, he's still a clown that's trying to be funny too. He's not someone to be taken too seriously, because the moment you try to delute the comedy of the character, you basically remove part of his very essence as an iconic villain.
@@billyboleson2830True, there are several times where Batman is about to either let joker die or kill him himself, but the writers always find some bullshit cop out.
@@SilentSnake1998 “We can’t let Joker die! We won’t be able to make money anymore.” “You can’t just make his other villains shine more?” “No! That takes work! We like easy money!” This pretty much sums it up.
@@billyboleson2830 In Infinite Crisis, there is a scene of an annoyed Joker killing a group of villains called The Royal Flush Gang who I am pretty sure are pretty strong and Joker is well..Joker. They don't show how he killed them, it just cuts to most of them already dead and him interrogating the survivor. I have no clue how he did this on his own and it seems bullshit. Yeah, the Joker is smart and unpredictable but I am sick of this hyper competence he displays like he is a crazier Lex Luthor.
@@MysteriousTomJenkins It gets even more annoying when he’s the villain of a story, and the writers for some reason are too scared to just let him fail. How long has it been since we actually got to see Batman beat joker, without an insane amount of people dying in the process for the sake of shock value? Hell, it seems like the writers won’t even let him get arrested anymore, they’re just obsessed with having him win everything when he’s supposed to be a fucking loser. How did we go from Superman easily dismantling one of Joker’s plots in metropolis, to having an alternate universe where Joker completely breaks Superman and turns him into raving madman who rules over the world like a dictator? Joker is really not built for this
I think balancing him as a “joke” type character with his punchlines being brutal death should be somewhat like art the clown. Everything seems silly until your nose is being melted off by his flower.
I feel like the joker would be scarier if he was truly goofy. I mean imagine he escapes prison and just eggs someone's house. Sometimes he sprays water with his flower or sometimes he sprays hydroflouric acid at some poor victim. You never know what he's doing. The only motivation he has is what he thinks is funny. That's why he's so hard for batman to thwart because their is no motive, lohic, or any way to predict his next move
8:12 The Killing Joke was ALWAYS canon. The idea that it only became canon retroactively is total misinformation which has been debunked for decades now.
My biggest problem with joker is that every other villain does not get a single standalone story without joker coming in and he just ends up being the main villain. Also every other villain is just completely incapable of anything💀
I kinda feel bad about Heath Ledger, he did such a legendary performance and people are starting to unjustly call it "edgy" or "overrated" because of mediocre copies of it and overall Joker fatigue...
Joker is many things; he is a villain, a terrorist, a psychopath, a monster, an anarchist, an agent of chaos, a mass murderer, an abuser, a toxic lover, a patriot, a victim, and even a jiggilo (aka Jared Leto's Joker), but the one thing Joker is without question is that he's a clown, and one thing clowns need to be is *to be funny* This is something many interpretations of the Joker forget about the character as while the Joker is indeed a criminal megalomanic who creates chaos for fun, but still funny and actually makes you laugh with dark comedy. This is something Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and Cameron Monaghan (Gotham FOX series Joker) understood when it came to playing the Joker in live action, and it is something Mark Hamill (BTAS/DCAU/Arkham Joker), Kevin Micheal Richardson (The Batman 2004 series Joker) and Anthony Ingruber (Telltale Joker) all understood when it came to voicing the Joker. *The Joker is a clown, and clowns are meant to make us laugh* Joker can, of course, be violent, psychotic and deranged of course but there needs to be a fine balance when depicting his criminal madness and his twisted comedy. Without understanding either you just get bad interpretations like Jared Leto's Joker or Joaquin Phoenix's 'Joker.'
also, get this indoctrination of this apparent higher set of perceived standards that this video brain-swayed into conformity regarding this comment section with the whole 'bUt hE nEeDS to maKe Us lAUgH' so superficial.
also, there's no such thing as the abstract concepts i.e (anti)Hero & (anti)Villain, Good & Evil, Psychopathy etc. & stop utilizing 'monster' in its allegorical factors against what it means to be human, it's completely paradoxical.
He's a failed clown. His jokes were terrible, so to cope with that, he committed horrific crimes. To him, that's funny. I don't think that's funny for normal people.
@@MidnightIsoldeTotally. It’s one of the main reasons why I prefer Manga over comics. A manga like Hellsing has a definitive while Batman never seems to get an ending except for in the Bruce Timm verse and the Arkham games.
@@BaldGuyElectric20245 yes I think it is also about being creative drive as well. As really DC is business driven which is why characters are essentially static and never ending stories. So I much prefer miniseries etc which creatives are allowed to do their own thing which the characters. The Joker really seems to be a character that is best served when he appears for a bit and seems to die at the end of a story arch. Yes, he will pop up again later no doubt, but he's too much as a constant presence. Textbook too much of a good thing
@@MidnightIsolde Yep, I find similar issues with Spider-Man who has basically gone backwards in character development. He went from being an adult with a marriage and working as a teacher to a photographer living at home. There’s nothing wrong with changes to the status but it felt forced and done in order to make the character seem younger. My biggest problem with DC right now is that they’re doing like 10 variations of the same character in different movies. It’s really confusing when the Snyder movies, Joker and the new Matt Reeves Batman coexist instead of focusing on a shared universe.
Funnily enough, i feel his appearance in Mortal Kombat 11 is the one of the most perfect interpretations. Hes still pretty mich a monster by all standards, but each of his moves is always trying to be comical and flashy in some sort of way, like they gave him a batman handpuppet gun and one of his fatalities is a fake friendship. Plush, he uses hostages as projectiles.
I feel like the Joker and Carnage are two great villains that each suffer from constant escalation and need to be brought back down to a smaller, more personal scale to reach their true storytelling potential.
People talk about "Batgod" when Batman is too powerful and compotent which makes him less interesting. But people don't tend to talk about Joker in the same way, even though I'd argue it is a similar problem. at the end of the day both are supposed to be characters that lack superpowers. And when a non-powerd criminal clown is able to thren the lives of everyone on the east coast on an almost weekly basis it's not surprising anymore. And it makes the reader question where the justice league is in all these events? ̶i̶s̶ ̶B̶a̶t̶m̶a̶n̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶?̶
I actually love batspecter. He’s not trying to be controversial, weird, or overly contrarian. He’s just a funny, informative and overall great UA-camr and that’s been so hard to find recently.
Animated and Arkham (both written by Dini and played by Hamill funnily) are my personal favorite interpretations. They’re funny, but threatening. They’re cool but not edgy. They’re madmen that don’t care about what people think or society or whatever, they only care about what entertains them and any aggrandizing of their motive, like the parts of Mad Love where he described his “past”, were purely done to manipulate or get something out of someone. More over, their obsessions with Batman aren’t some weird love story. Animated Joker almost died multiple times due to run ins with Batman and he wasn’t scared, usually, of dying, but he was when Charlie almost blew him up in “Jokers Favor”. My interpretation was always that he obsessed with Batman because he’s an insane narcissist that thinks someone as important as Batman is the only one entertaining and “epic” to be worthy of being his adversary.
I think your interpretation of Joker's Batman obsession is the correct and classic one. It is not a pseudo love story or literal romantic or sexual (!) Thing. Joker is a narcissist, so he obsessed over Batman because he is a worthy opponent that proves how Great Joker is. Englehart literally wrote Joker as more or less stating that in The Laughing Fish/Sing of the Joker and Dark Detective, plus many other writers in the 70s-90s did. Of course Bill Finger started this idea in the 40s too as there are some stories even then that state this.
The problem is they forgot the Joker is a jokester who do anything to tell what he thinks is a funny joke. The scary part is you have no idea if his next joke going to be harmless or deadly.
yeah he plays too much like a crazy ex girlfriend who is convinced you still love her, and will go all serial killer yandere on any woman who happens to look in your direction.
*batman voice* i recreated the joker juice you fell into that supposedly turned you into the joker, i took a bath in it and it didnt do shit. You were just looking for an excuse to act that way. Your gig is Up, Joker. (proved to be the second most effective way to stop the joker from jokering.)
I’ve said this once and I’ll say it a million times after: If Joker wants to rob a bank, he’ll do it. If he wants to do a whacky scheme, he’ll do it. If wants to one day just murder a bunch of people, he’ll do it. People today love to put labels on the Joker. “He has to have a message” or “he’s just a serial killer clown” but he’s not just one of those things. And I know this applies to any character since it mostly depends on who’s writing, but Joker has so much versatility compared to other villains. So he should never be stuck in one of those boxes.
my favourite brands of joker are "narcissistic radio show personality with no ability to tell the difference between showy entertainment and violence" and "already unhinged mobster losing what little marbles he has left due to a chemical bath" (i.e. Anthony Misiano's Joker and Jack Nicholson's Joker)
The idea of joker having a sad backstory works pretty good for me. The parts I don’t like are when they try to get all philosophical and deep, to me the joker is just a weirdo who enjoys chaos and torment and does random insane things…. Not all just horrific gruesome murders but have the joker do something weird like mess with people’s plumbing and vandalize public property. Have him cause goofy random chaos that’s what I like about joker
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 That‘s the issue with comics, isn’t it? The second Someone makes a cool, interesting, dark reimagining of a character and it gets popular, it’s all anyone ever actually does with the character for the next twenty years
Modern Joker sucks because a bunch of dorks have flanderised him into this edgy boy character who seems to operate as the face of "Loyal but dangerous" memes rather than being a legitimately interesting character.
Honestly I’m surprised people still hold Killing Joke in high regard considering most of its biggest moments have been undone. Barbara is batgirl again, batman never killed joker, joker’s origin has been tampered with constantly (thanks three jokers). I think that story’s canonizing has removed any impact it had before.
@@leithaziz2716 just 20? Batman has appeared in 8 thousand comics, 26 thousand if you count cameos or team books. Character has existed for 85 years I think it's humanly impossible to keep up with all of his lore, even in just the last 20 years a whole lot has been done for the character in terms of comics
Another thing I would do is stop overusing him. I love the Joker, he's my favorite comic book villain but I'm so sick of him popping everywhere. We need like... 5 to 7 yeara of no Joker in comics or any adaptation, let other classic villains shine, create new ones, idk, but just give him a break.
To me, the Arkham Joker is in my personal top 3 versions of the character. He is funny like the diniverse version of BTAS, but when he is angry, damn, he reminds me of joker from ledger, best from both worlds
I've gotta admit, I've gotten sick and tired of philosopher Joker. And as much as I have enjoyed Heath Ledger's portrayal, I think I'm leaning towards appreciating Nickolson's Mr. J more. But both are infinitely better than any modern portrayal.
I think PhilosoJoker can still work, but only if it leans into what The Joker essentially is - if it gives him added texture as a crime lord who still acts like a stand-up comedian on open mic night. I'd play it as him trying (and failing) to fully wrap his head around the philosophy of comedy, work around the angle that at his core, he's still a bad comedian, or thinks he's a bad comedian, and hasn't quite gotten over that yet. He likes to think his past is multiple choice - let's make his monologues with the captive audience of his henchmen and Harley playing referee a little more interesting by implying that as much as he'd like to think that, it isn't nearly as true as he hopes it is. That way you can show The Joker's fragility and why it's so scary when he snaps - it's sudden and disproportionate and all of a sudden he's calm again, like it never happened. Joker's a wild card, a ticking time bomb except he's yanked the hands off the clock because he thinks it's funny.
Three years is not enough, make it five to ten years so we truly get a feel for what is like to not have the clown around. Alternatively WB could pull a Beware the Batman and make a cartoon without the Joker entirely, focusing on lesser seen characters in terms of adaptation
Honestly ending the Joker for good is actually a pretty solid idea. He’s already iconic and that way his legacy can be cemented, with no more terrible stories undermining his character. Have someone else become the next big villain for a while (maybe Scarecrow? He worked so well in Arkham Knight until Joker took over anyway) Oh, and Batman characters that have become too edgy for their own good are, probably most of the villains, but especially Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman and Batman himself.
Or Commissioner Gordon; he learns his young proto-sociopathic son admires Joker. Is he getting him some much needed therapy? No you silly, he's forcing him to spend a night in a cell right next to Joker in Arkham Asylum. "To sCaRe hiM StraiGht". Yep, Commissioner James W. "by the fucking book" Gordon, the paragon of unyielding integrity, is a child abuser now. And yet he still wondered later why his son became a serial killer. Seriously wtf was DC thinking?!
This is why Brave and the Bold's version of The Joker is my favorite, he's easily one of the funniest and wackiest Jokers out there, but he has his moments where he's genuinely intimidating and a threat to not just Batman but many other DC heroes. He's constantly laughing too, every sentence is ended with a little chuckle or a cackle.
He’s basically the old school Silver age Joker from the 60s with a few modern adjustments. It’s still insane how that show was basically a 40+ year old throwback when it released yet it somehow worked. It was a return to an older era of Batman.
Modern joker has given us some gems like Femboy joker, the Woker, Jonkler, the Arkham subreddit, society memes and officer balls, guy fawkes vs joker, the jokah baby, my electric car Bruce, Batjokes, why so serious beatbox meme, no laws against the Pokémon Edit: sorry if this comment is cringe 💀
Modern Joker gave us in the Spanish speaking side of Facebook the group of La Sociedad and its spoofs on the "iT's LiTerAlLy mE" crowd Un saludo normal a la banda de La Sociedad!
telltale's joker is a different take on the character and a breath of fresh air when it comes to depictions of joker, but that wouldn't really have any place in this video
I feel like you should do a deep dive into The New 52. A lot of issues post-52 seem to stem from this era of DC. But the most common one comes from the Batman-related comics.
The healthy balance of funny and scary is why I think Jim Carrey should have played the Joker. Looking at his Cable Guy performance. Yeah, he can do both.
@@leithaziz2716 Aye, but I went with Cable Guy as it shows he can pull of intimidating and psychotic if he wants to. The Mask is more zany and silly. Definately Joker elements in there though. Another reason is he is one of the few people that can actually do that unnaturally wide smile and can drop it to scowl when needed.
Oh i forgot to write 1. He should have kept harley 2. I hate his psychoatic love relationship with Batman .. that they gave him in modern comic that HE NEVER HAD BEFORE
I much prefer the old take on Joker's Batman obsession which is not romantic at all, but rather just about Joker's narcissism. He loves Batman as an adversary because it shows how brilliant Joker is. Joker is too perfect to trifle with mere policemen etc. He does not love Batman in a romantic sense
the new 52 was their attempt to artificially create something iconic, and failing. Iconic comes around naturally, organically, its not something you can just manufacture. you can probably ask every single writer that has made something that people deem iconic, and none of them ever set out to make the ultimate , it just became that after the fact.
sorry to those who were watching the first version of this vid!! i had to reupload because of some editing errors
No worries ❤
I did notice part way through with the text on screen, but ye good video regardless happy to watch the reupload.
That why moi comments disappeared?
I’ve had to do that too, it’s understandable.
Scott Snyder is a horror writer so yeah I can understand why he failed to land the whole comedic sociopathy aspect of Joker. Court of the Owls was his greatest contribution on my opinion.
“I am such a freak. Society is bad. You drink water, I drink anarchy. I have never followed a rule. That is my rule. Do you follow? I don’t.”
"It's two face and one face they hate me for being a bat."
"Two Face flips Alfred like a coin. Alfred lands face up,so Two Face goes home."
Okay but yes
"Batman opens a batday gift"
"Inside there is a coupon for new parents, but it is expired"
"This is a Joker joke"
@@Emma-Queenofhell "I turn Two-Face to black and blue face!"
Keep the joker funny and scary don’t let him become a horror movie serial killer with a clown theme
@@Magicghost23 We got plenty, Terrifier specially feels like what DC has been doing with The Joker considering all the messed up things he has done
Joker can be multiple things. He is a versatile character. Horror, grim cold and calculating or a comedian who commits crime and kills. There’s been multiple ways to do it
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 Even Art the clown, terrifier's primary antagonist is funny and has several moments of comedy that help enhance him as a character
@@Birds_In_Crime haven't watched those movies, only saw trailers since they seem to be the type of movie that makes you really uncomfortable real quick (not a fan of long scenes of gore and torture in excess)
@@michealmahmoud6391the thing that makes us sad is about popular media forjing peoples opinion, and Jonkler 2019 was a big success, kinda makes the people wanting for more tragic stories
Joker needs to be wrong again. They keep trying to ascend him and his cause to new levels but he's better when his statements, his causes are simply refuted. BTAS Joker has him stalking a fat little nobody that punishes him, not through violence but tricking him with a dummy bomb to bare his entire life's thesis to the world and how pathetic it is. He even gets a laugh out of Batman, something the Joker wants but can't get.
Killing Joke, as pointed out, his one bad day for Gordon fails.
The actual Arkham games end with Joker pathetically begging to never be forgotten as he indeed is getting locked away to be forgotten.
Dark Knight, Heath Ledger talks about how, like him, everyone will just sacrifice each other, just to be told no by nobody giving into his games at the end.
Joker is best when his beliefs lose.
1st off you can't determine what's 'wrong' & vice versa in its absolute form of truth.
finally, what is the essence of the thematic process of Joker needing his beliefs or whatever you spewed to being false or as you put it wrong' - or have his beliefs 'lose'.
also, it's your 1st paragraph in conclusion a non-sequitur with the batman laughing but then you pointing out how it's something that Joker wants but can't get... huhuhuh???
@@godzillazfriction
The Joker is quite definitively wrong in many of those examples though.
@godzillafriction joker got Batman to laugh by being pathetically wrong, not by being funny like he wanted to. Are you dense or do you just pretend to be? Fancy words don’t mean jack if you can’t use em mate
@@yurifairy2969 do i really need tp reiterate this to you?
What Nicholson & Ledger nailed about the Joker is that while he’s violent, he’s also funny. These new emo jokers aren’t funny.
Plus they had substance. Modern Jokers are just shock value and nothing else.
Ledger’s joker is not at all funny. Especially compared to Jack Nicholson who had me cracking up every scene
Ledger’s joker was more serious than any other Joker yet has the nerve to say “why so serious?” Hell even Jared Leto was funnier than him
@@BootsBr8ksNot really, Ledger may have been cold and serious but he has multiple humor moments
@@michealmahmoud6391One scene that comes to mind is the "disappearing" pencil bit
Finally someone who understands that Joker is the type of villain that kicks a baby, makes an awful joke and just laughs his ass off, not a walking mental health PSA
It was good ONCE
ONCE
You mentioned Arkham's Joker. One of my favourite bits of his was in Asylum. You hear these thugs talking, one says 'he asked me to kill my sister, I done it', then another guy says "yeah he asked me too, I kept trying to tell him I didn't have a sister but he kept asking, so I just ran down some random woman". That, to me feels like a great capture of the balance Joker should be.
Oh and shout outs to Telltale Joker, underrated adaptation.
Telltale did something unique with it's version, I appreciate them for that
Shoutouts to John Doe for being a pretty normal guy, all things considered. He's just a lil quirky.
I think Arkham Joker strikes the right balance of being a psychotic mastermind, and just legitimately funny with fun bits. Even when as he's minutes before dying he still cracks jokes.
"Every decision you ever make ends with death and misery. People die, I stop you, you'll just break out and do it again"
"Think of it as a running gag"
He stabs Batman right as he says it, and it ironically makes him drop the cure by accident. It's almost poetic how his own antics led to his end.
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 I think it’s also interesting showing how Bruce’s choices affected the creation of the Joker in a more active way with John Doe. Taking the tragedy up , by making him someone who’s being haunted by the darker potential and Bruce’s actions are what leads him to become a vigilante or the clown Prince
I love Joker in Asylum and City. He appears way too much in Knight.
@@BonnieFluff I think what makes it work is how he combines elements of TAS, the movies (Nicholson and Ledger) and the comics to make a new and innovative Joker.
From design (appearance, the Joker has been given a make-up based Glasgow smile to make it look like he's always smiling. The medical roll as spats, etc) to personality. This felt like a perfect Joker from the comics that fits the gothic horror landscape of the Arkham games
Modern Joker just feels like Cletus Kassidy/Victor Zasz in Clown makeup.
I hate how much this comparison makes sense
Nah Cletus is a at least entertaining and 70s-90s Joker was distinct enough from him. The Modern Edgy juggalo though ? There is a reason editors are needed...
@@zillafire101 I remember seeing a fan fiction where joker started doing wacky schemes. And when asked why he said "I was starting to become another zsaz. And we don't need more than one of that guy."
i'm sure ledger's joker is victor zsasz here
@@lorenzopqsim not really. That is a surface level comparison
I REALLY believe people misunderstood the killing joke. The idea of one bad day is fucking bullshit. And because of this misunderstanding, they decided to have joker be this horror movie styled extremist. It's almost ridiculous.
gotta love the Homunculus Fallacy from you.
@@godzillazfriction ????
exactly. we all make choices, and to do evil is a choice, no matter the circumstances. The Killing Joke was trying warn against the one bad day idea, not supporting it. There are evil people by nature and not nurture.
Fuck if I know what the kid's supposed to be referring to. I'm not seeing any circular reasoning here and they forewent explanation in favour of smugness.
@@demi-femme4821 is that you projecting... don't even answer. I already know.
You know who's extremely underrated?
Mad Hatter.
Fucking love that guy
Anarky.
Can't agree more. Mad Hatter is actually much better at injecting horror into Batman than Scarecrow or Zsasz. He's so outwardly, obviously perverse.
Oh it doesn't matter. It's all just chemicals and synapses and rabbits and where is Alice?
@@JP-1990 Crazy Quilt.
Modern Joker has the same problem of the evil Superman trope: it's overused and lazy most of the time
You mean like comics in general? We're talking about an industry that existed as a front for the Italian mob for like 40 years, they weren't big on quality control.
There's a large portion of fans who say things like "there is no batman without joker" when it comes to defending his overuse and many fail to see that they are pretty much downgrading his talk of having such a great rogues gallery. I mean Spider-Man, Superman and Flash can have great stories without their big bad but Batman can't? EDIT: it was a rhetorical question. Don't need to tell me. I know Batman can have great stories with little to no involvement of the Joker.
@@jessicalang1024 Batman can exist without Joker and we have seen it done before, just because he is iconic doesn't mean he is necessary to all narratives about the dark knight. While the Batman is an incredible movie with almost nothing in terms of the clown prince of crime, and the Penguin is by far one of the best crime series I ever watched especially if we are talking in terms of comic book characters, Joker 2 shows why the Joker does not work without Batman since he is made to oppose the dark knight but not much else on his own
You say that and yet every live action version of Superman has to have Lex Luthor involved somehow. Spider-Man has the same problem where oops it was Green Goblin all along is a running joke within the fanbase and Flash relies so heavily on Reverse Flash now that when The Flash TV show was airing almost every season's main villain was just made to be a copy of Reverse Flash if not just being the Reverse Flash himself.
@@InReserveProductionsThat’s false at least with other Spider-man media nearly none really uses the Green Goblin. Venom is more the go to villain throughout every story.
@@Jsipki265 What are you smoking? TV, movies, games all of them Green Goblin is featured more than Venom and by a large margin.
@ ? Like what? Most animated series and video games mostly never purely focus in Green Goblin
I feel like the best way to use the Joker know is to just go all in on him being a wildcard. Like he will never be rehabilitated and he doesnt actually care or have an ideaology, but he is still content with himself.
Like you could have Punchline be all about "society bad", but Joker is like "i really dont care about proving a point, or batman, or anything. I just want to do crazy shit and have a good time."
I think his crimes should also be a wildcard. Imagine an early batman dealing with a joker who simply did something stupid, like rob a bank using gag toys and weapons, then next time you see him he has horrifically murdered a ton of city hall members and started city wide riots. Make him an actual joker like the play card, that's why he is so dangerous to batman because he is either going to burn a hospital to the ground with everyone in it, or send the mayor or gotham a prank gift that pies him in the face and batman never knows which joker he is going tobhave to deal with
There's a bit from the Arkham games that I think demonstrates this well. One of the many bombs Joker placed throughout Gotham is disarmed and found to be filled with marzipan and kittens. Are they all duds? Just this one? Half and half? Just one real bomb? The only way to know would be to know what Joker thought would be funnier at the time.
I think that's where he works. Just a guy getting his jollies in whatever way sounds fun that day.
Joker doesn't feel like the Joker anymore, he's THE villain that monopolizes the joke themed villain type in comics, to the point that any other joke themed rogue (with the exception of Mr.Mxyzptlk) is always regarded as some sort of cheap copy of him, even in cases where it's absolutely untrue (like with Trickster) and YET it seems like writers don't want to deal with the gimmick beside making fun of it or using it in the most superficial way possible.
Another problem i see is that every writer wants to amp up the others, everyone wants to write that big and bombastic Joker story that could become a must read but they fail in keeping the character consistent and deliver an actual good story so we get these big and bloated storylines that we'll forget in a week, it's so ironic that Paul Dini with "Slayride" was able to accomplish exactly what guys like Scott Snyder wanted and he did that with just a station wagon.
Sometimes less is more.
My idea for fixing the Joker is very simple: look back to Dixon's Joker stories.
The point of Dixon's Joker stories is very simple and it's a point that could be applied to most of Joker's masterpieces like Englehart's "Laughing Fish" or Moore's "Killing Joke": Joker's crimes are ludicrous and yet he executes them with the utmost seriousness.
The idea that all it takes is one bad day to make you a monster like Joker is stupid if you think about it but Joker treats it like it is this big revelation and he carries it out seriously cause THAT'S THE JOKE.
You can apply this to Joker's appearance in Knightquest, "Devil's Advocate" or "Dreadful Birthday", "Dear Joker...!"
90s Joker rules. That is all.
I only disagree with you on Killing Joke, that one sucks. Give me Case Study any day over Moore's BS...
Tbh you don’t know who the joker is he can be whatever the storyteller wants 😂😂 yall don’t say anything when Batman dark and not that cornball character he used to be😂
@@Wyatt6661 then he has no characterization at all.
If i can write a character in whatever manner i desire then how can you or anybody say that you like or dislike said character?
That's exactly the problem that a lot of people had with Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum's explanation of Joker's change throughout the decades: that Morrison, in order to justify the character evolution, ended up killing the very concept of characterization.
Reality is that Joker, exactly like Batman, went through a lot of changes throughout time from the more "mystery men" inspired period of the early Golden Age to the "cornballs" of the Silver Age, from the serious and deep version of the O'Neil era to the overly saturated and excessive of today.
Reality is that, despite not everything being top notch, Batman and Joker were at the peak of their characterization from the 70's till the end of the O'Neil's era (more or less the start of the 2000s).
Writers decided to take more inspiration in their depiction of Batman and Joker from the excesses of Frank Miller or Mike Barr than authors like Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant or the previously mentioned Dennis O'Neil
I would like to add that we did get an incredible telling of joker this year in tom kings "winning card" in which we see joker tell various jokes along with being completely randomly murdering people in brutal ways. He doesn't have any motive or some sort of "society" thing going on. He literally is just a sick killing machine that batman devotes himself to stopping. I think this comic went super under the radar because nobody is talking about it.
I will 10000% agree though. We just really need a joker break. Batmans rogues gallery is huge. We have a lot more options that just him. HBOS penguin just proved that. We don't need everything to be joker related. Just need a good story with good characters.
@@ChipzBitz personally i don't like Tom King's writing.
It's extremely pretentious and 99/100 of the times he doesn't get the characters he has to write.
He showed many times he doesn't understand Riddler at all (War of Jokes and Riddles, One Bad Day, Killing Time) and his stuff with Penguin is atrocious.
Having said that i haven't read "Winning Card" and i'll give it a try cause you recommended it but i must say i haven't great expectations about it.
The fact of Batman's rogue's gallery is that there are so many rogues that have a lot of untapped potential but (for the most part) nowadays we get a Joker storyline or a new villain that nobody's gonna use after the guy that created said villain will leave the Batman title.
People complain that guys like Penguin, Scarecrow or Two-Face have been around since the 40's therefore we need some new rogues cause "all the stories of the main villains have been told at this point" and yet EVERY writer that arrives on a Batman title has a new Joker story ready to be published.
Guys like Scarecrow or Mr.Freeze that are considered big shots in Batman's rogue's gallery have a very limited amount of good stories so the situation for foes like Firefly, Maxie Zeus or Mad Hatter is even worst
I really miss when Joker was ACTUALLY allowed to be funny
like when he roasted Bennett for turning him into Clayface, knowing full well he is the main reason Ethan's life was ruined
Love the 2004 show
What about Batman he wasn’t dark I remember he use to be lame 😂like
@@Wyatt6661no I don’t want him to be like grim dark but more like the Batman the animated series
Ive said it before and ill say it again. I miss when joker just liked offing people, made bad jokes, robbed banks, and legitimately wanted to KILL BATMAN as opposed to the "oh i love him i dont want to kill him and want to prove a point about soeciety" version. Basically joker pre morrison era
Yep. I can respect interpretations where he feels he's lost something from Batman disappearing but not in some sick, stalker sense. Just the emptiness one can get from not having a real challenge to overcome anymore or having a favorite opponent that is no longer there. Just losing the one person that pushed you to be better. But that should never take priority of the Joker wanting to and getting satisfaction from killing Batman. The only reason he should get upset at anyone else doing the job is because he wanted the achievement of doing so and doing it in his own theatrical and climactic fashion.
Personally I like the idea of him not wanting to kill batman but not not wanting to kill batman if that makes sense
Do I kinda like the idea of him feeling lost if ever actually succeeded in killing him
@@killerblodychuky6you mean wanting to BREAK Batman?
@@killerblodychuky6 Ah, like in DCAU. If he has to kill him, it's got to be done with gusto, like turning his ward into his pawn and getting him to attempt to kill him as a nice bit of dramatic irony. The script writes itself.
He's either an edgy psychopath written by like a 14 year old or LitTeRrAlLy Me type character
your comment is as superficial as this video... as well as this comment section.
so 1st, stop utilizing 'eDytH' it's a useless informal labelling of any type of definition that it's used within context.
2nd, there's no such thing as a 'Psychopath' etc. etc.
3rd, stop utilizing 'kid' in a paradoxical manner within the context of how someone would write The Joker. your standpoint is entirely reductive, superficial & is plagued with a higher set of perceived standards that gets determined in its absolute form of truth.
@@godzillazfriction- “🤓☝️”
@@godzillazfriction 🤓
@@godzillazfrictionJesus Christ, you’re bouncing on that clown cock
My hot Joker take is that the LEGO games version of the Joker is my favorite, he's just a silly little guy
LEGO Batman Movie mentioned (peak fiction)
I agree, something about a version of The Joker who gets teleported to fucking Apokolips and starts fanboying over the chaos, only to hide behind Batman as soon as Darkseid turns his attention against him is just hilarious in the best way possible, plus I think he and Harley’s relationship is the best in those games, the abusive relationship stuff is neat but basically everything that could be done with that concept has been, it’s still somewhat implied they might be romantic in the games but as the games went on it became less so and I honestly kinda prefer them as platonic partners in crime.
I love Arkham Joker he can be pretty funny at times. Mark Hamill never disappoints as Joker.
Robin:and Bruce Wayne man of the year reward
Joker: this is MY reward! Very clearly me !
“Im just going to come out and say it… I hate you, Joker.”
“GAAASP… I hate you too…”
“I hate you more.”
“I hate you the most.”
“I hate you forever.”
You know is bad when Alan Moore himself regrets the creation of The Killing Joke
Pretty sure moore regrets a lot of his comic work lol
Alan moore hates everything tbh
Alan Moore seems to regret being Alan Moore lol
@@AedanTheGrey he probably doesn’t regret the money he made from it though.
@@IdidtherightthingNo, he doesn't.
Because he didn't make any money from it, DC stole it.
Joker definitely needs to take a break. So that the next time he shows up it'll be meaningful.
You always save the championship fights for the PPV.
@@IMASAURUS1996 I think Scarecrow or Two-face should become Batman's nemesis, at least when Joker is out of the picture. I honestly forget how deep the rogues gallery is because DC loves to shove Joker and Harley in every single adaptation while the likes of Hugo Strange or even Bane get overlooked, in favor of another killing joke reference
Ngl,we need another bane arc, maybe have scarecrow as the secondary antagonist of it.@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197
@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 Two face would've make great sense with the connection he has with Batman and it's easy for audience to sympathize why he won't kill or abuse criminals.
Tbh they could be expanded on but there are so many others who need some exposure either 1st time on the silver screen or given a second look: Clayface, Court of Owls, Hush, Deathstroke, Croc...
@@illizcit1 strongly disagree with Deathstroke. We’ve seen him done too many times and it’s always either hit or miss, with more misses than hits tbh. Deathstroke needs a break. Or at the very least, stop having him fight everyone but the Teen Titans. Deathstroke was a Titans villain, but they’ve got him fighting everyone BUT them. (Don’t mention the live action show. What a disgrace that was).
My solution would honestly be to just retire the character for like a year. Everyone is sick to death of him and it often feels like other villains are treated as accessories to the endless war between Batman and Joker. Even in Arkham Knight when the main villain is ostensibly Scarecrow, he gets basically completely drowned out by yet more Joker, even when the character is literally so dead you start the game by cremating him.
@@regularshowman3208 One year is very little if we are talking comics, he should be retired for five years to really feel genuine and to allow for story lines focused on other rogues. I think after Joker 2 we will see a decrease in the character use even if little, maybe the Penguin's success will sky rocket more projects exploring other rogues that haven't had a spotlight in the public eye, I am personally hoping for Two Face and Scarecrow to get really good adaptations since they feel like contenders for the title of "Batman's nemesis"
But would also be cool to see minor rogues such as the Prometheus, Killer Moth or Maxie Zeuss make the jump into an live action adaptation
Comics biggest problem in general is how stagnant the scene is because we haven't given these heros and villians who are getting close to 100 years old rest.
@@rdogg114 Batman enters the public domain in just 10 years! Isn't that crazy?
Make it 5 - 10 years honestly give other villains the spotlight. Give me prometheus unless he's still dead.
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 i hope that means decress on harley quinn to becuase she is so overplayed im tired of her..while we can have ras al ghul and thalia al ghul they are so overlooked and the scarecrow in arkham knight was so cool amd creepy i want to see more of him that joker
I feel that the easiest way to write Joker is to relate his violence and criminality to how comedy works; sometimes the humor is absurdist, sometimes it is only funny to the comedian, sometimes the jokes don't land, and sometimes they go too far. Joker is always experimenting with his "routine", always keeping everyone on their toes but he knows that "you can never beat the classics".
Also, the whole face thing should've been a Hush story. I mean CMON!
To quote the Joker from Neil Gaiman’s “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader”…
“Kid…I’m the Joker. I don’t just randomly kill people. I kill people when it’s funny. What would conceivably be funny about killing you?”
17:38 Joker killing himself by challanging Batman, and him refusing to play is so genius. It is in character for Joker to do that eventually, it doesn't compromise Batmans morals either, while showing that Joker was his own worst enemy all along, the only reason he dies, is because of himself.
Thanks for casting me as The Joker! It was a blast portraying The Clown Prince of Crime!
Great video essay, as usual!
My favorite joker at the time was 2004 joker
Was scary, was funny, can fight, and was a vampire (at one point)
The rain of blood scene in Batman vs Dracula is pretty cool and Kevin Micheal Richardson did a great job
Honestly same here, gangster angle doesn't really stick with me.
I prefer this nutjub!
Agreed. He was peak Joker who deserves more love
2004 Joker is my second favorite because of all that. He's just so much god damn fun.
I'm a 2000s kid so the 2004 Joker was my introduction to Batman as a whole.
Batgirl being sent to the fridge fucking sent me.
EDIT: I think during the Killing Joke where Batman and Joker laugh, I always saw it as showing that at the end of the day nothing has changed.
That was dumb
I think that was the idea with the title, joker went through all these lengths all for nothing.
Completely agree with you at 8:48.
It really feels like because of the success of Heath Ledger's Joker performance in The Dark Knight, a lot of filmmakers and comic book writers have forgotten that the Joker character isn't just a homicidal maniac, but also a clown with a lot of chutzpah and panache who frequently makes dark jokes and uses clown themed gadgets like joy buzzers, bang flag guns, exploding chattering teeth, laughing gas, and acid squirting flowers, so seeing something like that again would be very welcomed.
People misinterpret Heath Ledger’s Joker nowadays.
People think that his Joker was great because he looks like an anti-establishment punk guy.
The reason Heath Ledger has an anti establishment punk style in the movie is to symbolize his chaotic nature and symbolizes him being death incarnate to Gotham City.
Leto’s Joker, Phoenix’s Joker, and other comic Jokers glamorize being punky and being anti-establishment for the sake of it and for shock value.
@@petermj1098yep... whenever the argument consists of 'shock value' i immediately smell overzealous superficiality.
OP, i truly wonder how that's the case with the 'Modern Joker' that apparently misinterpreted the Joker following along Heath Ledger's Joker.
I wonder if you'll dissect & properly elaborate using 'independent critical/analytical thinking skills & an outlook onto different perspectives' because from what im seeing based off this video & the exemplification of the comment section being a bunch of superficial, reductive & indoctrinated dimwits. i barely have any hope for you to indulge on those things I've asked you to.
@ You didn’t say I was wrong lol
Unironically some of the best stories are when he's just doing random side-quests. Like that one manga where Batman turns into a baby and he has to take care of him is pretty good
“Joker went from being beloved by fans to almost hated”
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”
But what if you were the villain to begin with?
In my dc headcanon Joker does end up finally dying. I imagine the chemicals that created him are finally taking toll on his body, and he's dying. He ends up coming up with a master plan to take Gotham with him, and his plan for the most part is succeeding. But when he's about to detonate bombs all over Gotham, he ends up succumbing to his illness and dies, unable to give the punchline.
@@reidcunningham5906 Kinda like that one Batman Brave and The Bold episode.
@@kendi5391 Sounds like a Breaking Bad episode
Damn DC should Hire you
this is as generic and plain and pedrictable as it can be! please write for marvel not dc!
This also kinda feeds into why Batman's no kill rule gets so much flack online, just off what people say, it sounds like Joker keeps getting worse to the point where not killing him is getting hard and harder to justify. As Joker is the main thing people cite when criticizing it.
That is one of the reasons the no kill rule gets flak among others.
1. As said, Joker gets worse and worse. When he was mostly just a normal super villain then it was just one of those things where "If he is gonna kill Joker, why not kill every super villain?" which worked at the time. Now however, when Joker can literally be a global threat, killing millions and being so damn sadistic and depraved that there is no level he won't stoop to? Where he seems like he is the most insane, sickest Batman villains rolled into one bleached skinned creep? He starts separating himself from the usual villains as an absurdly monsterous piece of crap who's death literally no one would mourn or care about. When he is just poisoning some fish to look like his face or robbing a bank with gag weapons, that is fine but when in some continuities he is successfully nuking whole cities...? Why isn't anyone killing him the moment they see him?
2. Batman will not only not kill him, there are some instances will he will stop other people from killing him. I am convinced that if Gotham managed to get Joker on the Death Penalty, but through illegal methods, Batman would stop it even though Joker deserves it. I am sure there are examples of Batman fighting other villains to keep them from killing Joker and in the Red Hood comic, he almost slits Jason Todd's throat to keep him from killing Joker. It at times goes beyond just sticking with the law, it almost seems like Batman doesn't want Joker to be killed in some stories so the no kill rule seems less like 'I can't stoop to their level' and moreso 'I need these villains to give me purpose'.
3. This is my personal opinion that I am not sure others share but...Batman has contingencies to take out some of his closest friends. He has plans to put down someone like Superman or Flash who are good people. The explanation is that they could be dangerous if their powers are used maliciously that they need plans to be stopped ASAP which is fair, a rogue Superman or Flash or any of the stronger League members would be scary...but because of how absurd Joker has gotten...he is now as major a threat as them. Joker once somehow Jokerized the League, making them enough of a threat for Batman to use some of his contingencies. This means logically, Joker is on that same level if he can brainwash someone like Superman...and yet...where is his contingency? Super smart Bruce Wayne has plans to take out his godlike friends but apparently doesn't have plans to take out the dangerous clown terrorist that has Jokerized them before. It shows a weird priority with Batman will despite the fact that one of his main villains has shown to be on a similar threat level as his friends...he won't put his hyper intelligence towards putting Joker out for good. He will have so many deadly contingencies for Superman...but not the Joker..who has actually turned Superman murderous before..?
@@MysteriousTomJenkins all fo this is just ¨batman kill joker¨ranting, proving the fist guy´s point
"Just like Kevin Conroy IS Batman" man 😔 Rest in peace king
Modern joker is if a emo kid became Jeff the killer in clown makeup
Something I’ve been noticing is the idea of him having this tragic backstory to explain his turn into a villain when in other adaptations it’s more of a mystery. Even then a lot of adaptations show him as a criminal before turning into the joker so we was never really relatable to begin with.
The irony of making joker an edgy slasher villain is it made him more generic and predictable which goes against the whole point of him being the ultimate wild card hence the name. Joker didn’t just used to want to cause chaos he basically WAS chaos to the point Batman once admitted joker’s mad schemes only makes sense to himself alone because he’d orchestrate ruthless, murderous attacks one day and the next pull wacky antics like running for governor or poisoning fish. Putting on a grand theatrical spectacle with Gotham as his stage at Batman’s expense is what he’s after. In my opinion joker should have such disregard of others that killing is almost an afterthought to him unless he’s targeting specific people like how he’d come on the tv and announce “so and so will die at midnight!”
Chefs kiss. You get it. Bet you are also a fellow Steve Englehart Joker fan given your references to his stories?
@ I do love his style of joker/batman stories but I’ll admit laughing fish and Dark detective might be the only stories of his I’ve read so far from anniversary anthology books.
@JokerFan-hj4iv yeah tbf I think those are the only Joker stories he wrote anyway (the main ones. There are a couple of others). But I think his are quite definitive so it really doesn't matter that he actually did not wrote that many Joker stories
@@MidnightIsolde I feel like Paul dini took a lot of inspiration from that era of Batman comics when writing BTAS. Perfect mix of gothic detective and fun adventure hero stories.
Does Joker even HAVE a character anymore? He feels almost flanderized to hell and back at this point!
That is; when it doesn’t feel like the writers aren’t just trying to make him into a Carnage ripoff.
Yeah like, why not use Victor Zsasz at that point?
Oh god, I never realized that Barbara got basically fridged. The implied SA and general humiliation of her always rubbed me the wrong way, but I never associated it with that trope for some reason. Killing Joke had some good moments, but the more time goes on, the more I agree with Alan Moore's take on it.
I think the author said he regretted the way Barbra was written, but someone else encouraged him to do that
I have no issue with it fridging is a stupid term
@@danse777macabre Yeah, I mean if it's well executed. People around the protagonist in general have tragedies happen to them regardless of gender, that's just how storytelling goes (when in doubt, ask Harvey Dent).
cry about it "boohooo muh fridge" everyone suffers in that story, you're just a crybaby
@@danse777macabre nah it's very real and prevalent
I think more people should read Batman: The Dark Prince Charming, because in there the Joker is back to being a clown themed criminal mastermind. There’s no deep nihilism, he only kills people because he wants to (and spares some because they amuse him), he’s not out here to make a point or break anyone’s spirit, he’s just the Joker.
The jonkler will never cease. Only jonk
We’re so back Jonkler bros
The Jonkler will outlive the Joker at this rate.
Why is the Jimbler so serious? Is he stuoid?
Only major issue I have with The Joker, is DC has a very bad habit of thinking he's the ONLY worthwhile Batman villain to explore.
Don't get me wrong, he's an amazing villain, but I like it when we see more love also given to characters like Two-Face, Ra's Al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, Riddler etc
I especially wanna see Scarecrow and Two-Face given their dues
@@jorts_master69 Yeah, both have almost the same potential of being Batman's nemesis if given the right writer, plus Joker is so saturated nowadays that he is running out of material for his own jokes and plans to go against the Batfamily without getting the death sentence (at this point is the Gotham's justice system fault for not ending their own suffering)
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197Ra’s Al Ghul is truly underrated and should be used way more often. Him being centuries old thanks to the Lazarus Pit and his knowledge of Batman’s secret identity is really cool and makes him stand out from most typical villains. I’d also like to see more of Scarecrow.
15:23 the end of the comic suggests Joker was fabricating the connection and was just using the myth to get a rise. One could say he was joking. It does not really line up with the later Three Jokers lore, though, so still could have been better handled.
Didn't they also retcon the three Jokers a few issues later by saying that they were just different aspects of the one and same guy after all? (which tbh makes this whole exercise seem kinda pointless imo)
I miss the old classic Joker, there were times where he can be funny or scary or sometimes both, he is very unpredictable.
The Joker should beatbox more better
@@valmid5069 agreed
Also, wanna get into why Penguin seems to have declined in recent years? Why he's just a gangster now, and that live action portrayals seem allergic to having an umbrella, weaponized or no?
Reject modernity, Return to Cesar Romero.
God no. Go back to and stay with Mark Hamill
@@Drums_of_Liberationit’d be nice if he’d actually return
"so Wanna play hardball, bats? do ya? Your call! Ha ha ha ha tickle tickle-"
The crap you talking about?
@@BiggestfanofGex It's a line from Batman Arkham Asylum
"OHHH YOU'RE RUINING MY BIG NIGHT!!!"
@@BiggestfanofGex You've never played Batman: Arkham Asylum?
Months of planning gone down the stinker!
I feel like what a lot of modern Joker stories forget that while he can be a threatening and downright scary, he's still a clown that's trying to be funny too. He's not someone to be taken too seriously, because the moment you try to delute the comedy of the character, you basically remove part of his very essence as an iconic villain.
Joker is a great bad guy but he is SUPER easy to turn into a tiresome Villain-Sue.
Jokers plot armor is far FAR worse then batmans and im tired of pretending otherwise
@@billyboleson2830True, there are several times where Batman is about to either let joker die or kill him himself, but the writers always find some bullshit cop out.
@@SilentSnake1998 “We can’t let Joker die! We won’t be able to make money anymore.”
“You can’t just make his other villains shine more?”
“No! That takes work! We like easy money!”
This pretty much sums it up.
@@billyboleson2830 In Infinite Crisis, there is a scene of an annoyed Joker killing a group of villains called The Royal Flush Gang who I am pretty sure are pretty strong and Joker is well..Joker. They don't show how he killed them, it just cuts to most of them already dead and him interrogating the survivor. I have no clue how he did this on his own and it seems bullshit. Yeah, the Joker is smart and unpredictable but I am sick of this hyper competence he displays like he is a crazier Lex Luthor.
@@MysteriousTomJenkins It gets even more annoying when he’s the villain of a story, and the writers for some reason are too scared to just let him fail.
How long has it been since we actually got to see Batman beat joker, without an insane amount of people dying in the process for the sake of shock value? Hell, it seems like the writers won’t even let him get arrested anymore, they’re just obsessed with having him win everything when he’s supposed to be a fucking loser.
How did we go from Superman easily dismantling one of Joker’s plots in metropolis, to having an alternate universe where Joker completely breaks Superman and turns him into raving madman who rules over the world like a dictator? Joker is really not built for this
I think balancing him as a “joke” type character with his punchlines being brutal death should be somewhat like art the clown. Everything seems silly until your nose is being melted off by his flower.
The new versions of the Joker sound like they were written by Urban Spook.
I feel like the joker would be scarier if he was truly goofy. I mean imagine he escapes prison and just eggs someone's house. Sometimes he sprays water with his flower or sometimes he sprays hydroflouric acid at some poor victim. You never know what he's doing. The only motivation he has is what he thinks is funny. That's why he's so hard for batman to thwart because their is no motive, lohic, or any way to predict his next move
8:12 The Killing Joke was ALWAYS canon. The idea that it only became canon retroactively is total misinformation which has been debunked for decades now.
Mark Hamill Joker is peak Joker. Perfect mix of funny and horrifying.
Truly one of the greatest portrayals. He was funny too and unpredictable.
Bro… that comic dub of Batman talking with The Joker actually went hard asf
My biggest problem with joker is that every other villain does not get a single standalone story without joker coming in and he just ends up being the main villain. Also every other villain is just completely incapable of anything💀
It’s Gannon all over again
I kinda feel bad about Heath Ledger, he did such a legendary performance and people are starting to unjustly call it "edgy" or "overrated" because of mediocre copies of it and overall Joker fatigue...
Joker is many things; he is a villain, a terrorist, a psychopath, a monster, an anarchist, an agent of chaos, a mass murderer, an abuser, a toxic lover, a patriot, a victim, and even a jiggilo (aka Jared Leto's Joker), but the one thing Joker is without question is that he's a clown, and one thing clowns need to be is *to be funny*
This is something many interpretations of the Joker forget about the character as while the Joker is indeed a criminal megalomanic who creates chaos for fun, but still funny and actually makes you laugh with dark comedy. This is something Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and Cameron Monaghan (Gotham FOX series Joker) understood when it came to playing the Joker in live action, and it is something Mark Hamill (BTAS/DCAU/Arkham Joker), Kevin Micheal Richardson (The Batman 2004 series Joker) and Anthony Ingruber (Telltale Joker) all understood when it came to voicing the Joker.
*The Joker is a clown, and clowns are meant to make us laugh*
Joker can, of course, be violent, psychotic and deranged of course but there needs to be a fine balance when depicting his criminal madness and his twisted comedy. Without understanding either you just get bad interpretations like Jared Leto's Joker or Joaquin Phoenix's 'Joker.'
'bAD iTerAtI0Ns' you can't determine what's 'bad' & vice versa in its absolute form of truth.
also, your conclusion is Homunculus spewage.
also, get this indoctrination of this apparent higher set of perceived standards that this video brain-swayed into conformity regarding this comment section with the whole 'bUt hE nEeDS to maKe Us lAUgH' so superficial.
also, there's no such thing as the abstract concepts i.e (anti)Hero & (anti)Villain, Good & Evil, Psychopathy etc. & stop utilizing 'monster' in its allegorical factors against what it means to be human, it's completely paradoxical.
He's a failed clown. His jokes were terrible, so to cope with that, he committed horrific crimes. To him, that's funny. I don't think that's funny for normal people.
Dude Godzillafriction...there are bad iterations look at Birds of Prey movie they did a HORRIBLE iteration of Cassandra Cain...
It's kind of sad how comics don't have a plot culmination point because of the status quo.
yet another Homunculus spewage from another indoctrinated dimwit.
Honestly this is why I prefer standalone graphic novels or series where characters can be fully explored within one story with an end
@@MidnightIsoldeTotally. It’s one of the main reasons why I prefer Manga over comics. A manga like Hellsing has a definitive while Batman never seems to get an ending except for in the Bruce Timm verse and the Arkham games.
@@BaldGuyElectric20245 yes I think it is also about being creative drive as well. As really DC is business driven which is why characters are essentially static and never ending stories. So I much prefer miniseries etc which creatives are allowed to do their own thing which the characters. The Joker really seems to be a character that is best served when he appears for a bit and seems to die at the end of a story arch. Yes, he will pop up again later no doubt, but he's too much as a constant presence. Textbook too much of a good thing
@@MidnightIsolde Yep, I find similar issues with Spider-Man who has basically gone backwards in character development. He went from being an adult with a marriage and working as a teacher to a photographer living at home. There’s nothing wrong with changes to the status but it felt forced and done in order to make the character seem younger.
My biggest problem with DC right now is that they’re doing like 10 variations of the same character in different movies. It’s really confusing when the Snyder movies, Joker and the new Matt Reeves Batman coexist instead of focusing on a shared universe.
Funnily enough, i feel his appearance in Mortal Kombat 11 is the one of the most perfect interpretations. Hes still pretty mich a monster by all standards, but each of his moves is always trying to be comical and flashy in some sort of way, like they gave him a batman handpuppet gun and one of his fatalities is a fake friendship. Plush, he uses hostages as projectiles.
I feel like the Joker and Carnage are two great villains that each suffer from constant escalation and need to be brought back down to a smaller, more personal scale to reach their true storytelling potential.
People talk about "Batgod" when Batman is too powerful and compotent which makes him less interesting.
But people don't tend to talk about Joker in the same way, even though I'd argue it is a similar problem. at the end of the day both are supposed to be characters that lack superpowers. And when a non-powerd criminal clown is able to thren the lives of everyone on the east coast on an almost weekly basis it's not surprising anymore.
And it makes the reader question where the justice league is in all these events? ̶i̶s̶ ̶B̶a̶t̶m̶a̶n̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶?̶
I actually love batspecter. He’s not trying to be controversial, weird, or overly contrarian. He’s just a funny, informative and overall great UA-camr and that’s been so hard to find recently.
Animated and Arkham (both written by Dini and played by Hamill funnily) are my personal favorite interpretations. They’re funny, but threatening. They’re cool but not edgy. They’re madmen that don’t care about what people think or society or whatever, they only care about what entertains them and any aggrandizing of their motive, like the parts of Mad Love where he described his “past”, were purely done to manipulate or get something out of someone. More over, their obsessions with Batman aren’t some weird love story. Animated Joker almost died multiple times due to run ins with Batman and he wasn’t scared, usually, of dying, but he was when Charlie almost blew him up in “Jokers Favor”. My interpretation was always that he obsessed with Batman because he’s an insane narcissist that thinks someone as important as Batman is the only one entertaining and “epic” to be worthy of being his adversary.
I think your interpretation of Joker's Batman obsession is the correct and classic one. It is not a pseudo love story or literal romantic or sexual (!) Thing. Joker is a narcissist, so he obsessed over Batman because he is a worthy opponent that proves how Great Joker is. Englehart literally wrote Joker as more or less stating that in The Laughing Fish/Sing of the Joker and Dark Detective, plus many other writers in the 70s-90s did. Of course Bill Finger started this idea in the 40s too as there are some stories even then that state this.
The problem is they forgot the Joker is a jokester who do anything to tell what he thinks is a funny joke. The scary part is you have no idea if his next joke going to be harmless or deadly.
What is instead of the joker he was called “the freakler” and instead of jonkeling he got *freaky* with Batman
this is just what happens off panel
Wtf
yeah he plays too much like a crazy ex girlfriend who is convinced you still love her, and will go all serial killer yandere on any woman who happens to look in your direction.
😩
Joker's Joker Juices are Jokering all the Non-Jokers
*batman voice* i recreated the joker juice you fell into that supposedly turned you into the joker, i took a bath in it and it didnt do shit. You were just looking for an excuse to act that way. Your gig is Up, Joker.
(proved to be the second most effective way to stop the joker from jokering.)
I’ve said this once and I’ll say it a million times after: If Joker wants to rob a bank, he’ll do it. If he wants to do a whacky scheme, he’ll do it. If wants to one day just murder a bunch of people, he’ll do it.
People today love to put labels on the Joker. “He has to have a message” or “he’s just a serial killer clown” but he’s not just one of those things. And I know this applies to any character since it mostly depends on who’s writing, but Joker has so much versatility compared to other villains. So he should never be stuck in one of those boxes.
AND THAT'S THE MAIN THING!! HEATH LEDGER JOKER WAS FUNNY ASF
Joker should go back to being a cartoonish villain he was more enjoyable that way.
my favourite brands of joker are "narcissistic radio show personality with no ability to tell the difference between showy entertainment and violence" and "already unhinged mobster losing what little marbles he has left due to a chemical bath" (i.e. Anthony Misiano's Joker and Jack Nicholson's Joker)
The idea of joker having a sad backstory works pretty good for me. The parts I don’t like are when they try to get all philosophical and deep, to me the joker is just a weirdo who enjoys chaos and torment and does random insane things…. Not all just horrific gruesome murders but have the joker do something weird like mess with people’s plumbing and vandalize public property. Have him cause goofy random chaos that’s what I like about joker
I think calendar man was done well. His usage for the long Halloween was creative.
Not a lot of people like what it did for the character in the long run.
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 yeah I can see why now
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 That‘s the issue with comics, isn’t it? The second Someone makes a cool, interesting, dark reimagining of a character and it gets popular, it’s all anyone ever actually does with the character for the next twenty years
Ross Al Ghul lmafoooo 💀
"We were on a BREAK, Detective!"
Modern Joker sucks because a bunch of dorks have flanderised him into this edgy boy character who seems to operate as the face of "Loyal but dangerous" memes rather than being a legitimately interesting character.
Plus on what planet is Joker loyal 😅
Honestly I’m surprised people still hold Killing Joke in high regard considering most of its biggest moments have been undone. Barbara is batgirl again, batman never killed joker, joker’s origin has been tampered with constantly (thanks three jokers). I think that story’s canonizing has removed any impact it had before.
People remember it because most of the audience doesn't keep up with 20 years worth of comic lore (as they probably shouldn't?).
OP issues with the Killing Joke makes zero fathomable sense.
@@leithaziz2716 just 20? Batman has appeared in 8 thousand comics, 26 thousand if you count cameos or team books. Character has existed for 85 years I think it's humanly impossible to keep up with all of his lore, even in just the last 20 years a whole lot has been done for the character in terms of comics
Your not very smart.
@@Ay-xq7mjyou're*. You're not very smart either.
Another thing I would do is stop overusing him. I love the Joker, he's my favorite comic book villain but I'm so sick of him popping everywhere. We need like... 5 to 7 yeara of no Joker in comics or any adaptation, let other classic villains shine, create new ones, idk, but just give him a break.
To me, the Arkham Joker is in my personal top 3 versions of the character. He is funny like the diniverse version of BTAS, but when he is angry, damn, he reminds me of joker from ledger, best from both worlds
They forgot that the Joker is a joker. If someone confronts the character on how he has become an edge lord, he might actually change for the "better"
I love jonklerspecters latest video on modern batman
I read I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream a few weeks ago and now I keep seeing references to it everywhere 😂
Lmao yeah. I feel like it really gained a lot of popularity a few months ago.
I've gotta admit, I've gotten sick and tired of philosopher Joker. And as much as I have enjoyed Heath Ledger's portrayal, I think I'm leaning towards appreciating Nickolson's Mr. J more. But both are infinitely better than any modern portrayal.
I think PhilosoJoker can still work, but only if it leans into what The Joker essentially is - if it gives him added texture as a crime lord who still acts like a stand-up comedian on open mic night.
I'd play it as him trying (and failing) to fully wrap his head around the philosophy of comedy, work around the angle that at his core, he's still a bad comedian, or thinks he's a bad comedian, and hasn't quite gotten over that yet. He likes to think his past is multiple choice - let's make his monologues with the captive audience of his henchmen and Harley playing referee a little more interesting by implying that as much as he'd like to think that, it isn't nearly as true as he hopes it is. That way you can show The Joker's fragility and why it's so scary when he snaps - it's sudden and disproportionate and all of a sudden he's calm again, like it never happened. Joker's a wild card, a ticking time bomb except he's yanked the hands off the clock because he thinks it's funny.
We should take like a 3 year hiatus from joker
Focus on other villains
Like reverse flash or cap cold literally anyone esle
Those are Flash villains.
But yeah a lot of Batman rogues need a refresher, especially in adaptations. WHERE IS MY KILLER MOTH MOVIE?!
Three years is not enough, make it five to ten years so we truly get a feel for what is like to not have the clown around. Alternatively WB could pull a Beware the Batman and make a cartoon without the Joker entirely, focusing on lesser seen characters in terms of adaptation
@@mateushenriquepinheiro3197 Or just in general not using him.
While I think he can occasionally pop up every now and then, I think maybe it’s best if he’s not put in any major roles for a bit
@aldusty2734 that is a good alternative
Honestly ending the Joker for good is actually a pretty solid idea. He’s already iconic and that way his legacy can be cemented, with no more terrible stories undermining his character. Have someone else become the next big villain for a while (maybe Scarecrow? He worked so well in Arkham Knight until Joker took over anyway)
Oh, and Batman characters that have become too edgy for their own good are, probably most of the villains, but especially Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman and Batman himself.
Or Commissioner Gordon; he learns his young proto-sociopathic son admires Joker. Is he getting him some much needed therapy? No you silly, he's forcing him to spend a night in a cell right next to Joker in Arkham Asylum. "To sCaRe hiM StraiGht". Yep, Commissioner James W. "by the fucking book" Gordon, the paragon of unyielding integrity, is a child abuser now. And yet he still wondered later why his son became a serial killer.
Seriously wtf was DC thinking?!
The Jonkler memes are evidence enough lmao
loved the dubbed comic sections, specially the 89' Batman laughing sfx
25 years ago we had the same conversation, overexposure, but then he was awesome again and back to seeing him in too many stories
4:38 - I was wondering why you wouldn't be critical of the book, but then your refrigerator meme got a chuckle out of me. Good video, bud! 🙏
This is why Brave and the Bold's version of The Joker is my favorite, he's easily one of the funniest and wackiest Jokers out there, but he has his moments where he's genuinely intimidating and a threat to not just Batman but many other DC heroes. He's constantly laughing too, every sentence is ended with a little chuckle or a cackle.
He’s basically the old school Silver age Joker from the 60s with a few modern adjustments. It’s still insane how that show was basically a 40+ year old throwback when it released yet it somehow worked. It was a return to an older era of Batman.
Modern joker has given us some gems like Femboy joker, the Woker, Jonkler, the Arkham subreddit, society memes and officer balls, guy fawkes vs joker, the jokah baby, my electric car Bruce, Batjokes, why so serious beatbox meme, no laws against the Pokémon
Edit: sorry if this comment is cringe 💀
Don't forget that time he made a months worth joker C*M. And was going shoot it all over Gotham.
Wait. Is femboy joker the one in end game yourself squad? Or is that the woker?
@@somethingclever4297 I’m referring to the Darkseptor femboy joker videos btw 😅
Modern Joker also gave us pregnant joker (peak comic ofc)
Modern Joker gave us in the Spanish speaking side of Facebook the group of La Sociedad and its spoofs on the "iT's LiTerAlLy mE" crowd
Un saludo normal a la banda de La Sociedad!
Not mentioning Telltales take of the Joker in this vid is criminal bro
telltale's joker is a different take on the character and a breath of fresh air when it comes to depictions of joker, but that wouldn't really have any place in this video
I feel like you should do a deep dive into The New 52. A lot of issues post-52 seem to stem from this era of DC. But the most common one comes from the Batman-related comics.
20:51 That caught me off guard lmaooo
The healthy balance of funny and scary is why I think Jim Carrey should have played the Joker. Looking at his Cable Guy performance. Yeah, he can do both.
He did play The Mask, and the simillarities are very obvious. His character just takes the Hijincks up to 11.
@@leithaziz2716 Aye, but I went with Cable Guy as it shows he can pull of intimidating and psychotic if he wants to. The Mask is more zany and silly. Definately Joker elements in there though. Another reason is he is one of the few people that can actually do that unnaturally wide smile and can drop it to scowl when needed.
@RainMakeR_Workshop i remember reading the mask comics its so dark
Do people forget that the joker is a criminal mastermind and now a serial killer? His title is literally the clown prince Of crime
People seem to forget Joker is, even at his most basic level, a clown.
Hot take: Tommy Wiseau was not the Joker we deserved, but the Joker we needed.
I’d like to read a story where Joker gets $100 billion and spends it randomly on jokes.
0:00
Reasons Harley loves the Joker:
1. He’s da jokuh
2. He’s da Jokuh baby!
Dat is flipping hawt!
doobus goobus reference??
@ yee
Oh i forgot to write
1. He should have kept harley
2. I hate his psychoatic love relationship with Batman .. that they gave him in modern comic that HE NEVER HAD BEFORE
It started around the 90s and 00s i think and the arkham games and nolan movies just made it worse. I dont think its going away any time soon sadly
I much prefer the old take on Joker's Batman obsession which is not romantic at all, but rather just about Joker's narcissism. He loves Batman as an adversary because it shows how brilliant Joker is. Joker is too perfect to trifle with mere policemen etc. He does not love Batman in a romantic sense
I think that martha wayne as joker should be revisted instead of being just in flashpoint tbh.
the new 52 was their attempt to artificially create something iconic, and failing. Iconic comes around naturally, organically, its not something you can just manufacture. you can probably ask every single writer that has made something that people deem iconic, and none of them ever set out to make the ultimate , it just became that after the fact.